Purrls

Monday, July 19, 2010

Kindle vs. Real Book?

I almost bought a Kindle. Frankly I love gadgetry and I'm impressed by the expanding uses of e-readers; 3G for web browsing, the ability to store 1500 books at once, the ability to instantly acquire a book, and even the ability to borrow some from LIBRARIES!!

So all of this is awesome but I have to say that I found one of the key reasons people tout Kindles and their ilk is *savings*. Savings? Really? The Kindle I was looking at was used, and so it was less expensive. Currently they are going for about $189, down much from their original $399 price tag.

However I had to laugh at how people are talking about the price of Kindle editions of books vs. the price of new, hardcover paper books. Really folks? Yes, a new Kindle ed. is about $10 and a new hardcover about $25. But who seriously buys all brand new hardcovers?? And if you DO buy all brand new hardcovers, you are probably not really concerned with saving money, are you?

I check out most of my books from the library. I do not have a big thing for saving books I have read unless I truly expect to read them again. I buy books that I expect to want again, like cookbooks or a treasured few novels, or books I think will take me way too long to read from the used bookstore. Rarely is anything more than $5 there, and I offset the costs further by bringing in my old books for trade.

So in my case, the Kindle would end up costing me MORE. And probably a LOT MORE with the ease of "oh I want that book ::boop:: hey I have it now!" impulse purchases.

So yeah, go ahead, tell me about how the Kindle is the wave of the future. It is awesome on many levels. But don't go on about how much you save! It's a savings in the same way that the Magic Bullet blender thingy can "reduce your grocery bills" by allowing you to make quesadillas at home instead of going out to a bar.